Violence in Sports

    I once worked with a fellow who was competitive in his marrow. Every transaction included a win/lose quotient. Nor was it enough for him to win.  Someone else had to lose. Someone had to be designated a "loser," and my colleague had to be the agent who applied the tag.
    I always thought he missed an important distinction, in the following way.
    We like to say that some virtues are conspicuous in the American character. Among these is a determination to persevere against certain circumstances or adversaries. We speak of can-do and never-say-die attitudes.
    Of course perseverance would not be considered a virtue if I persevered, say, against a neighbor's objection to my vandalizing his flower beds. Persistence admired is persistence toward a goal that is itself admired. Both the persistence and the goal are perceived to have their own value.  If I invent a better mousetrap against all advice that it can't be done, I have produced more than a mousetrap. I have produced an example of attitude and skill.
     Attitude and skill are valued in competitive endeavors. Business is one of these.  We assume (sometimes naively) that competition in business produces better products and services for customers, and better value for investors.  Success in the competitive world of business is admired when it is presumed to reflect exemplary attitude and skill.
    Sports also are competitive endeavors.  In sports contests at their proper best, athletes are supposed to test their skill against the rules and circumstances of the game, and against the skill of their opponents.  They are supposed to test nerve and attitude as well, against fatigue and pressure and surprise adversity; sometimes against bad odds of prevailing against a superior foe. We praise athletes who display "mental toughness" --  an unyielding determination to prevail. This is why the cheers are louder when underdogs win.
     My former colleague considered himself a sportsman. But for him, in sports as in other endeavors, competition wasn't about excelling.  It was merely about defeating others.
    The same is broadly true, alas, across sports of all kinds nowadays.  An ethic of winning through excellence had been adulterated by an ethic of defeating others through expedient means.
    The means run from small to large.  Basketball coaches may be noted for their skill at baiting referees.  Or whole programs may be corrupt. Recruiting scandals are a fixture in big-time college sports. Academic cheating scandals are, too.
    In some sports -- football, basketball, hockey and others -- violence is implicit in physical contact.  It is supposed to be bounded by rules, and by standards of principled behavior. But when the goal is simply to bring an opponent down, boundaries fall and rules bend. 
    Especially in big-money professional sports, violence may be among the overtly chosen means of winning.  Professional basketball includes intentional hard fouls that are meant to intimidate. Hockey teams employ players whose specialty is fighting.  Football players cultivate reputations for especially aggressive, punishing play.
    All of which brings us to the New Orleans Saints of the National Football League.  The Saints have been penalized by the league for running a bounty system in which players received cash rewards for injuring or incapacitating opponents.
    That is, Saints' players took payoffs for behavior that would be felonious in other settings.  The idea was to stack the deck: to deplete the opposing ranks so that the Saints' better players would be pitted against the other team's lesser players. The scheme was about recording the higher score, but it was not about doing a better job with the skills and tactics of football.
    Nearly half the players on the Saints' roster took the money.  Something more than cheating is at issue here -- something more than violating the rules of the NFL business conglomerate.  The Saints' scandal offends a basic sense of right and wrong. Nor did a willingness to betray principle  suddenly infect these young men when New Orleans hired them. They brought it with them, in a concept of competitive sport that could embrace a plan to limit genuine competition.
     The Saints' case is an extreme, yes. But it's an extreme of a regrettably familiar notion that winning and achievement are necessarily the same thing.